Vice President Harris believes that democracy is once again on the line in a presidential election.

In this interview from late summer 2023, as the contours of the 2024 campaign were coming into focus, Astead Herndon sat down with the vice president to discuss her life and work before Washington, and the fight ahead for her party.

This interview was conducted as part of the reporting process for a New York Times Magazine cover story on Ms. Harris, which you can read here.

The June debate between President Biden and former president Donald Trump triggered significant panic among top Democrats, who for months had been dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.

Despite all the concerns polls showed about age, how did the Democratic Party arrive at that moment?

That’s a line of inquiry The Run-Up had been putting to senior Democratic leaders for the past 18 months.

And we revisited it in a special episode from June that includes selections of our interviews with Vice President Harris, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison and Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former White House chief of staff.

How exactly did we end up with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee again? And why?

To answer these questions, we turn to two different branches of the Republican Party today.

First, we speak with Henry Barbour, who has been a member of the Republican National Committee since 2005, a consummate party insider. He supported Nikki Haley in the primary but now supports Mr. Trump. Then we speak with Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against Mr. Trump for the nomination, but was most similar to the former president among the other candidates in terms of ideology and style. He now fully backs his one-time rival and embraces the MAGA philosophy he represents.